i was a lurker in the alt lit scene in 2014 and i've come back to online lit in the last couple years (bought your new book alexandra) and tbh i never loved most people's work, i just liked the artistic freedom i saw and the sense that there was this DIY community pursuing poetry with a different agenda from the MFA industrial complex... the popularity contest thing was/is annoying but i also found people to be quite accessible in terms of casual social media interaction. i think if you want a coherent community with an ethos or whatever, you can't just publish everyone... there's a difference between snobbery and curation, however blurry the line can get... i've had a lit journal myself and like, why wouldn't you want to publish your friends or people with some traction vs randos? ofc it is all silly in a way and people got too pretentious about it back in the day (and still, i assume) but lots of fun things worth doing are kind of silly. and men will be sexist about pretty women getting attention. i'm a trans woman so i have seen that from both sides, and it's like... cope harder lol
thank you for reading, thank you for the comment, and thanks for buying my book! i think that’s my favorite thing about online lit, the casual nature of it all. i don’t come from the mfa world but i see mfa people at readings and the vibe can be very different. i started making zines bc i wanted to publish my friends (and myself) lol. what are you writing these days
i eventually got an MFA myself but at UNH where you could write tumblr vampire poetry if you wanted lol... i am doing poetry but output has been pretty low since i got out of the program in 2024, but i got some up online recently & more to come :)
I don’t have a dog in this fight, I’m just here to slowly die & say good bye…I’m not sure if I even ever created literature 45 yrs later…but, I get the nuance of the two pieces as a conversation…
i was a lurker in the alt lit scene in 2014 and i've come back to online lit in the last couple years (bought your new book alexandra) and tbh i never loved most people's work, i just liked the artistic freedom i saw and the sense that there was this DIY community pursuing poetry with a different agenda from the MFA industrial complex... the popularity contest thing was/is annoying but i also found people to be quite accessible in terms of casual social media interaction. i think if you want a coherent community with an ethos or whatever, you can't just publish everyone... there's a difference between snobbery and curation, however blurry the line can get... i've had a lit journal myself and like, why wouldn't you want to publish your friends or people with some traction vs randos? ofc it is all silly in a way and people got too pretentious about it back in the day (and still, i assume) but lots of fun things worth doing are kind of silly. and men will be sexist about pretty women getting attention. i'm a trans woman so i have seen that from both sides, and it's like... cope harder lol
thank you for reading, thank you for the comment, and thanks for buying my book! i think that’s my favorite thing about online lit, the casual nature of it all. i don’t come from the mfa world but i see mfa people at readings and the vibe can be very different. i started making zines bc i wanted to publish my friends (and myself) lol. what are you writing these days
i eventually got an MFA myself but at UNH where you could write tumblr vampire poetry if you wanted lol... i am doing poetry but output has been pretty low since i got out of the program in 2024, but i got some up online recently & more to come :)
glad you’re getting it out!
I read the peaces of poems and I liked them
One thing is in theos poem when he says “I’m sending out a major love and this is my message to you”
That’s an allusion to Michael Jackson’s Another Part of Me
“We're sendin' out, a major love
And this is our, message to you (Message to you)
The planets are linin' up, we're bringin' brighter days
They're all in line, waitin' for you, can't you see?
You're just another part of me
Hee-hee!
Ooh!”
good song
Thank you for sharing Theo
We take ourselves and each other too seriously. We could all take a deep breath and relax.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, I’m just here to slowly die & say good bye…I’m not sure if I even ever created literature 45 yrs later…but, I get the nuance of the two pieces as a conversation…